Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations (49 CFR Parts 191, 195) requires pipeline operators to submit incident reports within 30 days of a pipeline incident or accident. The CFR defines accidents and incidents, as well as criteria for submitting reports to the Office of Pipeline Safety. The following kinds of information are collected:

Key report information

In-depth location information

Facility information

Operating information

Drug and Alcohol information

Cause of the accident/incident

Specific information includes the time and location of the incident(s), number of any injuries and/ or fatalities, commodity spilled/gas released, causes of failure and evacuation procedures. The reports are used for identifying long- and short-term trends at the national, state and operator-specific levels. The frequency, causes, and consequences of the incidents provide insight into the safety metrics currently used by PHMSA, state partners, and other pipeline safety stakeholders, including the pipeline industry and general public. PHMSA also uses the data for inspection planning and risk assessment.

The incident/accident report ZIP files listed under the "Related Downloads" section, each contain two files: 1) a file containing a description of the fields/columns, and 2) a file containing the data.

Download, extract, and save the files from the needed ZIP file from the list on the right.

To load the data file into MS Excel (or MS Access):

Open Excel and click "File" then "Open". This will start the "Open" dialog box.

Select the data TXT file and click "Open".

Excel will start the Text Import Wizard and display the first dialog. Excel is smart enough to figure out that the file is a delimited file, so not adjustments are necessary on the first dialog.